Superior Drummer 2: Advanced Concepts

Hello everybody, I don't know if I'm alone on this, but trying to be a producer, involves a lot of knowledge in different areas, really too many, and if you're also trying to be the composer, arranger, programer, engineer, etc., there's a lot of research and learning involved.

If you're clever enough, you try to get the best equipment and sound sources, your money can afford, and after that, you'll probably invest in ways to learn as much as you can about your arsenal, in as little time as possible. Me personally, I have a ton of the Macprovideo tutorials, as I truly believe there one of the very bests.

Now, for me, a pianist and keyboardist, mocking up something, requires enough learning about other instruments, enough to create the right "Illusion", if you know what I'm saying, a mockup is really an illusion of reality, so it depends on how good you are at, capturing other instruments "essences", in order to program it in a convincing way.

With all that been said, there's a major issue for me, which I realized recently... For programing drums, I bought Toontrack Superior 2, which I believe is one of the best drum plugins on the planet, it has not only an array of possibilities, in terms of programing, but also a mind boggling diversity of drums available, at least for me, I own, along with the Avatar drumkit, NY Studios Vol.2, Custom & Vintage, Music City USA, and Roots, Sticks & Brushes.

Eventhough I already bought, and watched, the great tutorial "Killer Drums" from Macprovideo, by Toby Pitman, I'm still left with a big question in my head... What Drums to choose for what?? Styles and sounds from different styles and eras, are a big concern for me, including drum selection, plus routing and mixing techniques, in order to achieve that particular "sound". And, I don't know you but, not being a drummer, and not knowing these kits, by brand, what they are commonly used for, how are they routed, and mixed, is a mind boggling task, I really don't know where to begin!

Every explanation, description, tutorial, I've seen about Superior, seems to be directed at either drummers, or engineers, which are the obvious people to know about these, but about for people like me, which don't come from that particular area, or background? How do we learn what drums to choose, and how to route it, process it, etc.?

So, to make a short story loooong, I would like Macprovideo to do a tutorial on Superior Drummer 2: Advanced! It may involve one or multiple drummers and engineers, unless you find a trainer with the experience, and knowledge on both, drum selection, and engineering techniques. I think a lot of producers, that are not drummers or engineers, originally decided on Superior Drummer over EZ-Drummer, because of all the extra advances Superior Drummer offers. But in reality, at least in my case, it has really opened a big can of worms, on how to go about it. If you make such a tutorial, think a lot of the "other producers" would appreciate this immensely!!

thanks for taking the time to read this!
Arturo Ortiz,
Bronx, NY

Hi

I'm not sure how you would do such a tutorial. Either you process inside Superior Drummer, then Toontrack's Preset packs by world class engineers can be a good guidance - or you route multiple channels from SD into your DAW and use other plugins for the processing.

But since we all use different DAWs and many have loads of third party plugins they consider essential (like some 1176 for the snare), the processing in the DAW will turn out very differently depending on what you use outside SD.

So, the only common ground is what's inside SD then. And like I said, see what professionals did while struggling with SD's internal FX to achieve good results by going through presets. Those often don't sound natural in any way, because they're processed to fit into a specific genre and work with a typical pricessed arrangement in that genre. But that would be a sound to imitate then, I guess.

Now, that being said, any help in finding the most common mixing mistakes should help with your intial request. The 'typical sound' for different genres exists for good reason - a metal drum sound doesn't blend well with acoustic guitars and a Piano. A more general tutorial about how to mix so that instruments sound like they actually belong, that would be great!

And then, as you mentioned, preferences for different genres from the SD expansions should be mentioned and demonstrated. But also show how to achieve similar results with the factory library.